


Confab

by recoveringrabbit



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Post-Episode: s03e10 Maveth, but don't worry, discussion of Will Daniels, girl talk, this is a gift for Jane and therefore anti-Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 01:17:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8124952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/recoveringrabbit/pseuds/recoveringrabbit
Summary: In which Jemma, Daisy, and Bobbi discuss chocolate, love, the past, the future, health and wellness, and how it sometimes hurts to move forward.A female friendship story for a fabulous fandom friend.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agent85](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agent85/gifts).



Voices dribble through the half-open door, quiet murmurs slowly shaping into words as their owners come down the hall:

 

“My hands are killing me. I must’ve done two hundred reps today.”

 

“Are you taping them up right?”

 

“I’m taping them the way May taught me. I think I just got soft, with the whole earthquake powers thing—hey, is that containment room—”

 

“I didn’t know the door could do that.”

 

“We’ll have to remember to tell Fitz. Lemme just make sure everything checks out.”

 

Jogging to the door, Daisy pokes her head through the gap almost perfunctorily, not expecting anything more than some wiring gone amuck. She scans the room at eye level, assessing potential threats with an ease born of practice, and feels confident enough in her initial diagnosis to have her hand on the control pad before she’s backed all the way out. Nothing’s here. So when a quiet voice says, “Hi, Daisy,” she jumps.

 

“Geez, Simmons.” She presses a hand to her heart as Bobbi looms behind her. “You scared the crap out of me.”

 

Jemma’s head pops up from behind the white bed, the one spot of color in the otherwise stark room. She reaches a tentative hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear. “Sorry.”

 

Over Daisy’s head, Bobbi raises an amused but kind eyebrow. “Practicing your camouflaging skills there, Simmons?”

 

Her hair brushes her shoulders as she shakes her head, a tiny smile—which won’t fool Bobbi and absolutely doesn’t Daisy—playing at the corner of her mouth. “No, just stretching my back a bit. It’s good to lie on the floor sometimes.”

 

“Really?” Daisy opens the door the rest of the way and steps in, crossing her arms in front of her chest. 

 

“Yes,” Jemma says, a little defensively, “at least, it’s always been true for me.”

 

“Any particular reason you’re lying on  _ this _ floor?” Bobbi asks.

 

“Well, you can hardly expect me to lay on  _ mine _ , who knows how old that carpet is. It’s new and clean here, at least.” Daisy and Bobbi acknowledge that truth; the flat brown floor coverings in the bedrooms are at least older than any of them. Staring at her hands in her lap, Jemma continues. “And it’s quiet and private. But someone can find me easily, if they really want to.”

 

Her voice trips a little over  _ someone _ and falters entirely over  _ they _ . All three of them know who the pronouns signify, though no one says it. It’s been several months since Maveth—since Coulson and Fitz tumbled back through the portal with the dust of death in the new crevices on their faces, since Jemma wept into Fitz’s shoulder like her heart was breaking but clung to him like he was reassembling it. Daisy’s been busy, but not too busy to notice what’s happening between their two favorite scientists. Or, more accurately, what  _ isn’t _ happening. Fitz refuses to speak about what happened on Maveth or really much of anything, his head so firmly buried in his work that he entirely misses the way Simmons can’t keep her eyes off him. According to Lincoln, the silence in the lab is deafening. According to Hunter, no decent man will go after a girl whose boyfriend just died, so what do they expect? According to her own observations, Will doesn’t even begin to come into it. Simmons is pining, all right, but it’s after the same man she’s been missing since she came back from Hydra.

 

Daisy meets Bobbi’s eye for only a second, but they’ve fought together often enough that’s all they need to set a course of action. “I could use a good stretch,” Bobbi says, coming fully into the room while Daisy closes the door behind them. A secret flick of her fingers turns off the camera feed, too. 

 

Simmons eyes them warily. “You haven’t got things to do?”

 

“Does it look like I have things to do?” Daisy gestures to her green shirt and jeans, then points at Bobbi dropping her leather jacket on the bed. “And Bobbi just got back. If there’s an emergency they’ll find us. Move over.”

 

She drops to the ground to Simmons’s right, crossing her legs while she waits for Jemma to make room. Spinning until her head is perpendicular to the bed, Jemma settles back with her hands clasped across her stomach and her elbows tucked in to make room for them. Bobbi eases herself down more gingerly on Jemma’s other side. “I’m not as young as you two, you know,” she says, propping the foot of her right leg up on the edge of the bed. “You may have to haul me back up again.”

 

Daisy snorts. “Please. Like you didn’t beat me down in the gym last week without breaking a sweat. I told you I was getting soft.”

 

“I got lucky.” Bobbi winks at Jemma, who offers another pathetic excuse for a smile.

 

“Flexibility isn’t entirely dependent on age. Yes, of course, children are more flexible because their ligaments haven’t lost all their elasticity and their bones are primarily cartilage, but adults can retain a high range of motion if they merely maintain a stretching routine. Look at May, for example. In fact I would imagine that you’re actually more flexible, Bobbi, because of the rehab you had to do for your knee.” She stops, pressing her lips together. “At least, I imagine. I suppose I don’t actually know what your regimen was like.”

 

Only obliquely referenced by Simmons and never at all by anyone else, her missing six months still leave elephantine footprints when they lumber through conversation. They’ve all adopted a policy of avoidance, squeezing around the edges as best they can, pretending they’ve tripped on a garden hose if they accidentally step on the trunk. It doesn’t take much. With no monolith, no Will, and no Ward, nothing remains to force them to talk about it. 

 

Bobbi has the most practice with acknowledging tragedy without discussing it, so she steps into the gap with a grimace that somehow still manages to be sympathetic. “Not at first. I had to spend months just trying to bear weight on it. But yeah, after I got the strength back, I did a lot of tai chi to help with breathing and flexibility.”

 

“Did May teach you?” Jemma asks.

 

Daisy and Bobbi look at each other and blanch. They could have sworn Jemma knew that May’s sabbatical had lasted the whole time Jemma was gone, but maybe that was just another of the things no one talked about because it didn’t matter anymore. Bobbi speaks carefully. “Well, she was gone.”

 

“That whole time?” Whipping her head back and forth, Jemma searches for confirmation that she’s reached the wrong conclusion. But of course, she doesn’t receive it. Her brown eyes brim with worry drawn from her never-ending wells. “If I was gone, and May wasn’t here, who oversaw your rehab?”

 

Daisy chuckles. “We made it up!”

 

“One of your lab techs blew out her knee once, playing basketball or something—”

 

“Which one?”

 

“Carre,” Bobbi says, and Jemma snorts, rolling her eyes.

 

“As if that’s at all comparable to the injury you sustained. Carre, honestly.” All Jemma’s disdain doesn’t cover her remaining concern—for not being a medical doctor, she sure seems convinced they’d die without her services. Although Daisy, literally, would have. 

 

“We had your notes,” Bobbi continues. “And the rest—”

 

“The internet is a miraculous thing, my friend.” Daisy raises her hands in the air and wiggles her fingers. “You’d be surprised what these babies can find if they try. Although—well, I was kinda busy at the time, too. Fitz did a lot of it.”

 

“Fitz did.” Her voice lights gently over the words, making them less of a question and more of an acknowledgement of a certain truth.  _ Of course he did _ , she seems to say.  _ What else would he do. _

 

“I used to get articles on my phone at three or four in the morning.” Bobbi smiles at the memory. “Hunter was livid—man likes his beauty sleep.”

 

“They weren’t always even in English, were they?” Daisy asks.

 

“I don’t know how he read them.”

 

“He’s fairly decent at languages,” Jemma says softly. “He breaks it down into component parts and fits it together—his accents are terrible, but he can read them.”

 

“However he did it,” Bobbi says, waving her hand, “they were a big help. I improved way more quickly than I had any right to.”

 

“I noticed.” Managing, somehow, to look pleased and concerned and slightly guilty all at once, Jemma directs her gaze to Bobbi. “I never asked, though—how was it? Well, I mean—”

 

“Rehab sucks,” Bobbi says bluntly. “I cried every day of the first three weeks, and almost every day for another two after that. But, you know, it did what it was supposed to do. I got through it.”

 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

 

Bobbi gives her the smile only Bobbi can give, the one that lets you know she understands what you aren’t saying, the one that says  _ this means more too _ . “You would have been if it was up to you.”

 

Jemma looks at the ceiling, pressing her lips together, almost smiling but not quite. Daisy’s seen that look more often than she’d like over the last year. Nudging Jemma’s leg with her foot, she slides around to curl into fetal position, head propped up on her elbow. “It was almost like you were here, though, with all the greens and weird grains we had to eat. Did you know Mack makes a mean quinoa?”

 

“He had a girlfriend once,” Bobbi says wisely.

 

Jemma does smile then. “Well, it is good for you. And quite tasty, when prepared properly. I’m glad nutrition didn’t go completely out the window in my absence.”

 

“No chance. There were these little bags of trail mix in the kitchen, like, all the time—nuts and raisins and hardly any m&ms. I would have liked more, but I didn’t know who was making them, so—”

 

Bobbi raises her hand in the air. “I made them. I had to do something to keep busy when you all were jetting off. Put them in your backpacks, too—”

 

“I thought that was Mack!”

 

“No, me. And on the Director’s desk. And all over the lab, just in case. And in Fitz’s jackets.”

 

“The reason comes out,” Daisy says quickly, unwilling to let either Fitz or the reason he needed food in his pockets linger in the air. “You’re the one who needs to some serious training about the nut-to-chocolate ratio.”

 

“Uh-uh. Those snacks were for protein and staying power when you all were on the run and not eating normal meals. Chocolate would send you into a tailspin. Back me up here, Jemma.”

 

Simmons shrugs apologetically. “She’s right, Daisy. Chocolate has its uses, but one shouldn’t allow it too strong a presence in one’s diet.” Her forehead crinkles up. “Actually, I don’t remember the last time I had chocolate. I used to love it, and I might not have had it in months.”  _ Or longer _ remains unspoken.

 

With her free hand, Daisy reaches out to circle Jemma’s upper arm. The muscle under her fingers surprises her. It shouldn’t, though—just because Simmons prefers to fight with her brain doesn’t mean she can’t fight the other way, too. She held up under torture and survived Maveth and its devil, after all. She’s strong enough. “We must fix that immediately. Late night Target run?”

 

“We’d never get clearance.”

 

Bobbi gets up onto her elbows. “I think there’s some hot cocoa mix in the back of the pantry. It’s not the same, but—”

 

The end of her sentence is lost as Daisy and Jemma jump in together:

 

“Oh, that will not do at all.”

 

“Ew, Bobbi, that’s disgusting.”

 

Daisy glances over at Jemma in a delight that only grows when she sees her friend’s answering grin. It’s almost like FitzSimmonsing, right down to the confused look Bobbi gives them. “What’s wrong with hot cocoa?”

 

“Nothing,” Daisy says, “as long as it’s made with actual chocolate. And milk. I’m not sure that cocoa mix has anything other than sawdust shavings in it, with a little dirt for color.”

 

“I didn’t think it was that awful,” Bobbi says, and Daisy laughs incredulously.

 

“You’ve clearly never had  _ decent _ hot chocolate, forget amazing hot chocolate.”

 

“What makes amazing hot chocolate?”

 

“When you have it,” Daisy says sagely, “you’ll know.”

 

Jemma nods her agreement. “Fitz and I had hot chocolate in Berlin once; it was the richest, creamiest, most decadent thing you could imagine, like Willy Wonka’s chocolate river.” One side of her mouth tweaks up creakily. It looks like it’s forgotten how. “Fitz drank it so quickly he got whipped cream in his eyebrows. It was the funniest thing—I had the picture as his contact in my phone for ages.”

 

Daisy pictures it, a younger Fitz looking old with white eyebrows and a scowl, a younger Simmons looking like a girl with a light in her eyes and that laugh that makes her eyes scrunch up as she looks for someone to share it with her. When was the last time she saw Simmons laugh, she wonders— _ really  _ laugh, not just quiet chuckles or polite  _ mmhmms _ . She can’t remember. But she remembers the  _ first _ time she saw it, and even the memory makes her laugh too. “Funnier than when you got him with the whipped cream on the Bus?”

 

Jemma’s eyebrows draw together for a second, then clear, opening up into amusement. “You mean when  _ you _ got him with  _ shaving  _ cream? You won’t throw me off the scent so easily.”

 

“Simmons, please, do you think I wouldn’t take credit for that? It would have been the perfect capper to that week of you trying to prank me. The prank alone was amazing, the karma would have been the icing on the cake.”

 

“Wait, what?” Bobbi props herself up on her elbow, one genial eyebrow already raised and ready to share the fun. “Was there a prank week that I missed? Because I have two or three good ones up my sleeve.”

 

“It wasn’t a prank week per se,” Jemma explains, “only, Fitz and I missed pranking the freshman, and Skye—Daisy, I mean—missed being a freshman, so we thought it our duty to initiate her properly. How could we know if she would make an agent without being tested?”

 

“And what was their grand plan?” Daisy demands of Bobbi. “A mop in a closet. A mop. In a closet. And it didn’t even go off around me—I just heard the screaming when it popped out at Fitz and he screamed like a girl.”

 

“We thought it was a ghost!” Jemma defends, “and you can hardly blame us, not with that trans-dimensional being hopping back and forth from another planet—”

 

“Man,” Daisy says, shaking her head back and forth against the cool floor. “Those were the days.”

 

“I miss them.”

 

Jemma turns to face Daisy directly, their twin curved shapes forming a heart on the floor. Behind her, Bobbi lays flat again to give them a semblance of privacy, sensing as Daisy does that this is something for the two of them alone. Best big sister Daisy never thought she would have. “I do too, sometimes. I miss being Skye.”

 

“Do you?” Jemma reaches out a hand to her, and Daisy takes it between them, oddly touched by the gesture. “I like Daisy very much, for what it’s worth. I’m glad you found out who you are, like you always wanted. Even if it wasn’t exactly ideal.”

 

“Not exactly,” Daisy snorts, thinking of all the crap her journey to discover herself entailed. 

 

“But at least you know who you’re supposed to be, now, and you’re being her.  _ Daisy _ . So it’s been better for you, really.”

 

“Yeah,” Daisy says, squeezing Jemma’s hand so she can maybe keep her tears at bay. It really has been better—superhero powers aside, she loves who she’s become. A leader. A friend. A mentor. An agent. But Simmons—oh, her friend, her first friend in a lot of ways—the last two years have beaten Simmons down into the dirt. If she wasn’t so strong she wouldn’t still be standing. Somehow, though, she is. Even through things Skye would never have guessed Simmons with her neat ponytails and embroidered sweaters could survive. “For what it’s worth,” she says primly, drawing a half-smile from Jemma, “I thought Bus-Simmons was great, but genius scientist Jemma Simmons, now with added butt-kicking? She’s  _ amazing _ .”

 

The half-smile turns whole, but still not genuine. “Thank you. I’m not sure I agree.”

 

“You should,” Bobbi says, rejoining the conversation. “Leaving aside your adventures off world, it’s not just anyone who takes an undercover mission to Hydra and lives to tell the tale. I’m pretty sure the only two people to do it are here in this room.”

 

Jemma flops back again, staring at the ceiling. “I was scared out of my mind the entire time.”

 

“We were scared for you!” Daisy shudders, remembering the fear that coursed through her when Coulson told them all where Jemma was. “I still don’t know what Coulson was thinking, he knows how well you lie—though, maybe not, because he wasn’t there for the shining moment that was ‘well you certainly have a gorgeous head’—”

 

“Daisy!”

 

Daisy glances over Jemma’s chagrined face to Bobbi, who looks simultaneously horrified and amused. “Bobbi, anyone ever tell you about the time Simmons shot Sitwell in the chest?”

 

“What?”

 

“With an ICER,” Daisy relents, “but still. He went down like a sack of bricks.”

 

“Jasper Sitwell?” At Daisy’s nod, Bobbi shakes her head. “I would have given money to see that. Even before I knew he was Hydra.” 

 

“Was he?” Daisy and Jemma say at once. 

 

“So Calderon told me. Disappeared off the face of the earth, anyway, according to Maria Hill.”

 

“Huh.” Daisy pokes Simmons in the arm. “Look at you! Shooting Hydra agents before it was cool.”

 

“What happened?” Bobbi presses.

 

Daisy props her head on her hand so she can see both women, raising an eyebrow at Jemma to offer her the story-telling rights. Pink is already creeping into her cheeks, though, so Daisy takes the reins. “Okay, so, we were at the Hub, right? And Fitz and Ward were out on a mission and we were getting stonewalled. Like, they wouldn’t tell us anything. So we decided that we were going to do a little reconnaissance—”

 

“Hacking,” Jemma corrects in a murmur.

 

“—but I was wearing a tracking bracelet, long story, so Simmons had to be the one to do it. She’s got the panel off the wall and everything, I’m talking her through, and then Sitwell comes striding up and she has to distract him, right, so she starts  _ flirting _ with him, the most awful—” She can’t help howling, seeing Jemma’s panic-stricken face, feeling the horror radiating off of that skeevy Sitwell. Jemma’s cheeks grow tight, trying to hold back her own smile. “She tells him he has a gorgeous  _ head _ ”—which makes Bobbi snort—“and then says ‘I like men about my height, but heavier than me—”

 

“Simmons, you didn’t!”

 

“And this understandably creeps him out, okay, so he presses her, and she pulls out the ICER and shoots him. Just, bang, in the chest. And then she—then she—”

 

“What did you do, Jemma?”

 

Simmons puts both hands over her face and shakes her head in disbelief at her past self. “I apologized.”

 

“Apologized!” Daisy repeats between shrieks of laughter. Bobbi joins her, a warm kind rolling boil, and after a minute Jemma removes her hands from her face and clasps them over her stomach, trying and failing to keep the smile out of her eyes. She doesn’t succeed.  _ Bingo _ , Daisy thinks. “And then she dragged him by his ankles around the corner. We had to get May! It was a whole thing!” 

 

The room fills up with laughter, bouncing, echoing, until it seems like it it must be soaking into the walls because there’s no room for it otherwise. When, Daisy wonders, was the last time  _ she _ laughed like this?

 

When their sides ache and tears roll down their faces, they sigh into silence. “I can’t believe you did that,” Bobbi heaves, slightly hiccuping.

 

Jemma shrugs. “Fitz might have been in trouble. What else was I going to do?”

 

All her good work goes up in a puff of smoke. Daisy wants to thunk her head against the floor. Can Simmons even  _ go _ two minutes without talking about Fitz? Normally she wouldn’t mind. In fact, she’d listen to Simmons talk about Fitz for five hours straight if she didn’t look so darn sad while she did it. But that was not  _ this _ .  _ This _ needed to be avoided at all costs.

 

“Jemma?”

 

Both women turn their heads to look at Bobbi, who steadfastly ignores their gazes. 

 

“Wild shot in the dark, here,” she says. “Do you  _ want _ to talk about Fitz?”

 

Daisy raises panicked hands behind Jemma’s back:  _ abort, abort! _ But Jemma sits up sharply, spinning to place her back against the bed and slumping over her bent knees. “Yes, I’d love to talk about Fitz. I’d actually love to talk  _ to _ Fitz, but as that course of action appears to be off the table—well, I’ve all these thoughts bouncing around my head like atoms and it’s weird to speak to him aloud when he’s actually here to hear me but I can’t seem to sort them out by myself—”

 

“Stop.” Daisy heaves herself into a sitting position and holds up the  _ timeout _ T. “Okay, start over.”

 

“I may have lied.” Jemma tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m not really in here stretching my back. I’m in here because I can’t be in the lab.”

 

“Because it’s awkward,” Daisy says.

 

“Because Fitz won’t talk to you,” Bobbi says.

 

Jemma huffs out an unamused laugh. “Oh, he’ll talk to me: ‘That looks right, yes.’ ‘Whatever you think is best.’ ‘Um, maybe not that, but this?’ Everything perfectly professional and that’s it. It’s like when we first met all over again, except this time I know he doesn’t hate me. At least, I don’t think he hates me. It’s hard to tell since he never  _ looks _ at me.”

 

“He doesn’t hate you,” Daisy says, putting her hand on Jemma’s calf.

 

“I wouldn’t blame him if he did.”

 

“He doesn’t.” Bobbi sits up on her elbows, electing to keep her ankle elevated. “And actually, Jemma, you know he never hated you, don’t you?”

 

Rolling her eyes at Bobbi, Jemma scoffs again. “I beg your pardon, Bobbi, but as I was the one there I think I—”

 

“He didn’t,” Bobbi says firmly. “He told me himself while you were gone. He just didn’t know what to say to you.”

 

“Oh, well—” But Jemma cants her head, considering, and Daisy does the same. Sweet, awkward, arrogant Fitz afraid to say something to adorable, awkward, genius Simmons? Yeah, that doesn’t take a lot to imagine. “But it isn’t that now,” Jemma finally says. “Believe me, we have  _ plenty _ to talk about.”

 

“Sure. But maybe he doesn’t know how to talk about it any better than he did then.”

 

“Oh, Lord.” Simmons groans and puts her head on her knees, her hair making a curtain around her face. “I can’t blame him for that, either. I hardly know how to talk about it. He says we haven’t got the courage, but I do, I just—don’t—” She sputters to a stop, shrugging helplessly. 

 

Bobbi throws a fond glance at Daisy, who rolls her eyes. These tiny British people and their utter inability to talk about how they feel. “So start here,” Bobbi suggests. “Tell us everything you’d like to tell Fitz. It can be practice.”

 

Jemma’s head shoots up, face alight—then her expression falls, and Daisy wants to groan aloud. “I can’t tell you everything. Some of it’s...private.”

 

Looking at Bobbi with both eyebrows up, Daisy meets a warning and subsides without saying the slightly suggestive comment that sprang to mind. Anyway, if something happened, Simmons would have told her, right? Isn’t that what you did with your friends?

 

“So don’t,” Bobbi says encouragingly. “We’re here to listen if you want to talk—however much that is, and about whatever.”

 

“It’s just—” She sighs again. “I know why he’s being like this. The perfect,  _ infuriating _ man, he’s got this idea in his head and he’s ignoring any data that doesn’t fit into his theory. It doesn’t matter what I say to the contrary.”

 

“What does he think?” Daisy asks.

 

“He thinks that I love Will. And I suppose I did tell him so—”

 

“What!” Daisy shrieks before Bobbi gives her a look that’s the equivalent of a smack. 

 

“I am aware it was not the ideal thing to say, but as it was only  _ after _ I told him that I want—never mind. That’s one of the private things. I thought it would be enough, anyway, and it wasn’t.”

 

“It would be hard to hear you loved someone else, no matter what you said before,” Bobbi says, far more calm than Daisy could manage. “Do you?”

 

Jemma doesn’t even hesitate: “No.”

 

Daisy wants to pump her fist in celebration. Aside from the answer to a question she finds herself stressing about in the shower, the firmness of Jemma’s denial displays a strength Daisy hasn’t heard from her in way too long. Instead, she asks what seems to be the necessary follow-up: “Why did you say it, then?”

 

Pulling her knees tighter to her body, Jemma takes a minute to answer. When she does, she directs her response straight at Bobbi. “Do you remember when we first spoke about this, before San Juan?”

 

Bobbi nods. Daisy makes a note to gouge details from her later.

 

“That was the first time,” Jemma says, “the first time I ever thought—at least, the first time I ever let myself think about Fitz romantically. It was all—confusing, really, with everything else that happened; I couldn’t sort it out to its parts. I missed him desperately. I felt guilty. And grateful. And overwhelmed.”

 

“I know,” Bobbi says. “It’s strange and terrifying at the best of times, and that was not the best of times.”

 

“No.” Jemma attempts a smile. “I’ve a habit of that, apparently, because I felt all those things again when I came back, after...and I thought…”

 

“You thought that was what being in love felt like?” Daisy scoots forward to wrap her arms around Jemma’s shoulders, unable to stop herself any longer. Jemma’s personal space bubble be darned. “Oh, babes, not even close.”

 

“I know that now,” Jemma snaps, but not heatedly, and rests her head against Daisy’s. “I knew it then, too—at least, I knew that whatever I felt about Will didn’t matter, really, because it differed so dramatically in degree to what I felt—feel—for Fitz.”

 

“What do you mean?” Daisy asks, readjusting her hold.

 

“I mean it was much, much less. But I was wrong, as I’ve been realizing lately. It wasn’t a difference in degree, it was a difference in kind. My variables were incorrect from the beginning.”

 

Daisy lifts her head just enough to make Simmons look at her. “High school dropout, remember?” she says, her hint of a smile finding an echo on Jemma’s face. “You gotta spell it out for me. What’s different?”

 

Jemma’s eyes drop to her lap, and Daisy feels her still in her arms. Under Daisy’s wrist, Jemma’s pulse thumps doubletime. Daisy waits. She won’t press and she won’t push, but she wants to hear the answer—wants to hear Jemma say it out loud, so the truth will finally, finally be real. The nuns had a saying: the truth will set you free. She hadn’t believed it at the time. But learning the truth about herself had set her free, so maybe there was something to it. Maybe it could work for Simmons too.

 

Jemma’s answer drops into the air like a stone in a pond: a tiny plunk, then rolls that become ripples that become waves. “It’s different because I chose Fitz. I choose Fitz. Over every single person I’ve known or ever will—over myself, even, if it comes to it. I never want to be without him. I will never stop fighting for him. He’s part of me, and part of me will always belong to him, clearly even across galaxies—oh, does that even make sense? It sounds ridiculous.”

 

A tear drops into Jemma’s hair where it rolls off Daisy’s cheek, and Bobbi painfully scoots backward until she’s sitting cross-legged with her elbows resting on her knees. “Yeah, a little,” she says. “But it also sounds like being in love.”

 

Jemma sucks in a breath. It can’t be a surprise, Daisy thinks. After all this time and everything they’ve gone through, Simmons  _ has _ to know.

 

“I thought so,” she breathes out, gently, like she doesn’t want to scare it away. “I thought that must be it. And it has nothing to do with those other feelings, the ones I had for Will too, because all those things have always been true. All this time. I just didn’t know.”

 

“Have you told him that?” Daisy asks.

 

Bringing her hands up to wrap around her neck, Jemma shoots Daisy a disbelieving look. “I can hardly say it to you! Anyway, he wouldn’t believe me. He can’t hear anything that doesn’t fit with his understanding, which, actually”—she ruffles up like an annoyed bird, one finger in the air—“is very poor scientific method. Do you think if I began by pointing out that any theory that doesn’t account for all the facts—”

 

“No,” they say in unison.

 

“I thought not.” Simmons slumps back against the bed. “But I don’t know how to begin. There’s too much between us, and we’ve never been good at talking.”

 

Daisy draws back, incredulous. “Are you serious? You guys used to talk eighty-five miles an hour. We couldn’t have a conversation without the two of you breaking into your weird private language none of us understood. Like that one  _ Star Trek  _ you made me watch with the bald captain.”

 

“ _ Darmok _ ,” Simmons says, because of course she can’t just let it go if she knows the answer, and returns to anxiously twisting her fingers. “Yes, but that wasn’t important. This is  _ vital _ —if we don’t talk about it, we’ll always be trapped on two sides of a tremendous chasm. And the one thing I can think that would bridge the gap I can’t say, and even if I could he wouldn’t believe me.”

 

It is, Daisy acknowledges, a puzzle. Even now, she’d trust Jemma Simmons’s expert opinion on Leopold Fitz over pretty much anything else. If she says he won’t listen, she’s probably right. But she’s also right that the weight of, well,  _ everything _ can’t and probably shouldn’t be ignored. It would be like a live bomb ticking away below a city. Sooner or later, everything would come down. Entirely at sea, she glances at Bobbi from behind Jemma’s back and is glad to see the thoughtful set of their friend’s mouth. 

 

Sure enough, Bobbi touches Jemma’s leg just long enough to get her attention. “Simmons, you know, you don’t have to leap the chasm all at once. Building bridges takes time, but they’re stronger in the end.”

 

“What do you mean?” Jemma’s forehead wrinkles up. “Tell him a little at a time?”

 

Bobbi leans back on her hands, giving Jemma space to consider. “You said it’s like it was before you were friends. Can you let that be the start? Go slowly. Take your time. Be as honest as you can, but don’t push him beyond what he can take.”

 

“Start over, you mean.”

 

Shrugging, Bobbi says, “If you want to call it that.”

 

Jemma shakes her head firmly. “I don’t want to pretend none of it happened. We had nearly ten years together before anything, and even since—I wish some of it hadn’t happened, but there was good, too.” She turns to Daisy. “You wouldn’t wipe it all out, would you? Even the bad things?”

 

“No.”

 

“No,” Bobbi agrees, surprising them both. “You can’t. It’ll come up, I promise, even if you try to ignore it. Believe me.” Her mouth tugs up ruefully. “But sometimes you need a break from the weight of the past to move into the future.”

 

If anyone would know, it would be Bobbi, with her husband/ex/boyfriend. Jemma knows it, too, and she frowns at the floor as she tucks her hair behind her ear. She needs some space, Daisy realizes, so she nudges Bobbi with her foot. “Pretty sage, there. Like, expensive Chinese fortune cookie wisdom.”

 

“Don’t give away my secrets,” Bobbi winks.

 

“I don’t know, I may need a bribe. I’ll let you off easy, though—chow mein, chicken and mushrooms—”

 

Her detailed list comes to an abrupt stop when Jemma looks up. “Do you think it will work?”

 

Switching instantly to serious, Bobbi returns her attention to Jemma. “I can’t promise anything. But I think it might. The world isn’t ending at the moment, after all. You have time. And I know he misses you too.”

 

“I didn’t say I missed him.”

 

As though she had said anything else, Daisy thinks, and Bobbi just holds Jemma’s eyes and smiles. Blushing, Jemma rolls her eyes. “All right, yes. Very well.”

 

“So, I can’t help but notice,” Daisy drawls, blinking slower than she normally would, “no argument about the fact that Fitz misses you? Anything else we should—” 

 

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP

 

_ “ _ Oh, that’s me,” Jemma says, unfolding to her feet and reaching into her pocket for her phone. “ _ Fascinating _ as this line of questioning promises to be, I’ve some just-finished tests and I’m to go over the results with Lincoln. Whom”—she fixes Daisy with a stern eye—“I have yet to hear all about.”

 

“Same time next week?” Daisy jokes, and is surprised when Jemma pauses on the way to the door.

 

“I’ll be here.” Her fingers fly over the keypad, but she doesn’t move immediately through the open door, instead curling her hand around the door frame. “Fitz isn’t the only one I’ve missed.” 

 

She glances over her shoulder, offering her sunshine smile like a gift, and if there are a few clouds veiling its light, it’s still bright enough to warm Daisy’s heart and melt it like a popsicle. “We missed you too, Jemma.”

 

“I guess I couldn’t lie in more ways than one.”

 

They raise matching eyebrows her direction.

 

“As it turns out, I do like men about my height but heavier than me.” 

 

Then she grins and slips out the door. Their laughter follows her down the hall.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Yes, Jane, of course those references are intentional. :)


End file.
